Dinosaurs of China

Over the summer we visited the Dinosaurs of China exhibit in Nottingham. It was great, a beautifully laid out museum with wonderful information and clarity of purpose.

I loved learning about the links between birds and dinosaurs and so did Pickle and Penguin. The fossils they had were amazing and clearly showed the features of dinosaurs reflected in modern birds.

They also had a fantastic tent outside with perfectly pitched activities for the kids to extend their learning through playing with various resources.

All in all a wonderful day and learning experience. Did you take any interesting trips over the summer? I would love to hear about them. Until next time. x

Dinos and Ice

Today we had an adventure with ice and dinosaurs. We looked at the water melting, we used salty water and put the ice in the sunshine. Pickle and Penguin watched the dinos emerge and the colours drip down in channels through an ice block.

The dinos were really easy to set up. I squeezed some small dinosaur toys we bought at a charity shop into a balloon, filled with water, tied them off and stuck them in the freezer.

We also put some food colouring on the surface of a large block of ice and watched how it melted. Pickle and Penguin watched the channels running through the middle of the block.

This is definitely an activity we will be repeating during the hot weather. We spoke about the salty water changing the freezing point of the water, the kids felt the ice melting and how the surface was smoothed over.

30 Days Wild - Day 28

Today we watched a brand new ladybird emerge from its pupa stage. It was great to see and Pickle and Penguin were really happy to watch, they love checking our plants for ladybirds, their pupa and the larvae.

30 Days Wild - Day 27

Today was a rainy day. It was a puddle splashing day. It was an opportunity day. We did the puddle splashing thing again of course. But we also started the day by putting to glasses of water outside on our garden lawn.

I hear you why on earth would you do that? How is that wild? Well today we were learning a bit about weather. We were learning about rainfall. I asked Penguin how much water he thought would be in the glass after all that rain and after seeing all those puddles. He understandably thought it would be full. Of course it wasn't. He was surprised and it sparked a little conversation about puddles and rain.

We left one glass outside to see how much more rain falls over night but this was our day rainfall...

Tomorrow I think we will find a ruler and do some measuring!

30 Days Wild - Day 26

So each weekend Penguin brings a book home from preschool to read. Last weekend he had one about bees. It was all about how they live and their life cycle. He loved it. He was really very interested in all the information and we read it a lot. On Saturday too, I guess that is another wild thing we did on the transport museum day...

Anyway, today we were watching some bees outside. They were visiting clover, we saw their pollen sacks and their fluffy bodies. We spoke about what the bees were doing and what they got from the plants and how. We talked about how bees were important and we should be kind to them because they help us. A lovely conversation and happily watching the bees.

30 Days Wild - Day 9

Do you remember these guys? 

Today we found out more about them! They are Ladybird larvae! I never knew. We learnt a lot about the lady bird life cycle using the iDial. You can find the iDials here... 

It turns out these little guys were getting ready to pupate. They are still in the same position as here but now in the Pupa stage. We will be keeping an eye on them to see if we can see them emerge as ladybirds!

30 Days Wild - Day 6

Today was a wet day. A really wet day. I didn't dare take my camera out in the rain but we did a bit of puddle splashing but decided to have a peep at some wild life cameras as our main activity.
This is the site we used. We liked the Osprey nest cam the best I think...


Later when the rain cleared up we went and looked at a couple of trees with our wild life trust iDial but I will do another post about that another day....

Making Fossils

Did I mention Pickles love for Dinosaurs? I did? It is a sickness I tell you!

He likes to 'hunt' for fossils and explore his 'objects' (his term not mine!) with his magnifying glass. We have been talking a little bit about how the fossils were made. He is 3 so we are talking basic stuff...

Anyway I thought it would be fun for the kids to make their own fossils. It is really simple to create a little cast, I think I will repeat the idea looking at footprints like the ones we found on the beach on the Isle of Wight.

Pickle and Penguin both chose a shell and made an imprint of it in some air dry clay. I then mixed some plaster of paris and they very carefully helped me to pour it into the imprint. We left it until the next day and then were able to uncover our fossils! Penguin loves to look at them, she points and says 'my fossil, mine.'

A nice little activity, pretty clean too. I was careful to mix the plaster of paris myself as there are hazards so just make sure you read the packaging before using and take necessary precautions.

Until next time...

Fossil Hunting

So.....one of the things we did recently was go on a very special trip! Pickle wanted to go fossil hunting, he is totally dinosaur crazy and kept asking to go Fossil hunting and it was hard to explain to a 3 year old why he is unlikely to find fossils in Hertfordshire.

So we went on a lovely little mini holiday to the Isle of Wight and it was AMAZING. We had the best time and we found real fossils on our two fossil hunting trips. Pickle and Penguin had a lovely time and Pickle is so proud of his dinosaur bone finds.

So these are pieces of hipsolophodon bone, Iguanodon bone and the big lump is a piece of theropod thigh bone.

Pickle found the thigh bone and I could tell it was a good find when the paleontologists jaw hit the floor. She asked if he had just picked it up and scrabbled for her camera to take a photo. Later when we visited the fossil museum another paleontologist took some more photos of the bone and showed us some marks on the surface which he explained were tooth marks. Eeek, exciting.

We saw the footprint casts on the beach and were told a lot of information about the rocks and the food prints. I remember bits and I have to say I found it quite fascinating. Our guides were fantastic and we all had a great time.

Before Pickle was into dinosaurs I knew just a few, I have learnt so much from him and from his interests. We have really thrown ourselves into the dinosaur things as a whole family and I love it. I really love the dinosaur thing, it is amazing, truly amazing.

We visited Dinosaur Isle museum and Dinosaur Farm, both are really interesting places with a lot of information about discoveries on the island. Pickle particularly liked the models set out to play with a Dinosaur Farm and Penguin loved the tooth sieving activity they had there. I must have a look at setting something up similar at home...

Dinosaur Isle has a lot of interesting displays of fossils as they were found in situ and Pickle was particularly enamored by the animatronic dinosaur demonstration. Both are well worth a visit for the dino enthusiast!

Until next time.....

Nests

Pickle has lately had a fascination with nests. He likes to build nests and look at nests. He talks about birds and their nests.

We recently set up an activity building a nest himself. We collected nest building materials from the garden and then made some salt dough as a base.

Pickle and Penguin love collecting sticks, grass and moss from around the place and Pickle really enjoyed putting them together with the salt dough to make a little nest.

We made the salt dough brown by adding some coco powder, and watched a video of a robin building a nest for some top tips. Pickle took it into preschool as a present for the preschool leader because he said she likes nests too. So sweet.

Until next time.....

Dying Flowers

Over the Easter holidays Pickle and I decided to try and dye some flowers. We had a lovely chat about how plants get their water and how it travels around the plant. I would be interested to try this experiment at some point with a potted plant rather than cut flowers to show the involvement of the roots...I think this level is sufficient for now but it would be an interesting extension.

So Pickle had tried this experiment at preschool but they did not see a very strong colour change. When we did it we decided to make the colour of the water very concentrated. We used a lot of food colouring, so much that the water was very dark and you couldn't easily see which colour was which from first glance.

We also cut some of the stems very short to see what difference that would make....

It turns out quite a lot! The shorter stems meant that the colour showed up in the flowers much faster, within a couple of hours.

 After an extended period of several days the shorter stemed flowers also had a more intense colour. I would conclude that this is due to the fact less of the colouring is lost on the way up, in the stem and remaining leaves for instance.

I love the pretty striping of the colours running through the veins of the petals.

The blue and red were more successful than the green colouring. We swapped a red and blue flower over to see if the colours would mix afterwards. They didn't. When placed in the blue water the red one went blue with just some red patches left at the tips of the petals; the blue flower stayed blue in the red water. This gives me ideas about future experiments mixing the food colouring to make purple before adding the flowers....what would happen? The green colouring did give green lines in the petals rather than blue and yellow so I don't really expect a chormotographic effect....but I am not sure what would happen, it might be an interesting conversation to have with Pickle in the future after some chromatography adventures....

Until next time...

Broad Bean Maze

One of our recent experiments involved growing broad beans in a jar. You can find that here. Once we had seen the beans sprouting we planted them into pots and moved the pots into different positions to learn more about plant growth.

We placed one on a windowsill, one in a cupboard and one in a plant maze we made ourselves.


We made it by cutting a hole in one end of an upturned shoe box. we cut some squares of card from another box and taped them on opposite sides inside the box. We added a broad bean plant and shut the lid of the box, leaving it on the windowsill.

Over the course of a week it grew..

And grew....

It navigated the maze to find the light. We have put a book on top to see if it can make it past one last hurdle.
Isn't that amazing!?

Until next time....S x

Growing beans

One of our latest projects with Pickle and Penguin is growing broad beans in jars. Pickle added cotton wool to a jar with a coffee filter around the outside. He then added 3 broad beans against the jar and poured water onto the cotton wool.

A few days on and we have this!

They are really starting to grow. We will pop these into pots soon and use them for another experiment!

Until next time...S x

Skittles Experiment

We did the Skittles experiment.We put skittles in a circle on a white plate and then poured on some warm water. Pickle was really excited to be able to do an experiment with us all. He was very happy taking photographs of the result with his own camera, received for Christmas.

We talked a little about the colours dissolving in the water and looked at what happened to the colours as they started to mix. Pickle had a grand old time and enjoyed seeing how the skittles themselves had dissolved later in the afternoon.

Until next time....S x

Sugar pops

Hello all, sorry for my absence, I have been rather under the weather. Just a little cold really but the coughing and loss of voice has made me rather run down after running after two toddlers all day! I am on the mend now and hope to be fully recovered in time for half term!

The latest of our little science experiments was to do with dissolving and solutions. We made a concentrated sugar solution and added lollypop sticks to make sugar crystal pops. 

Adding a little blue food colouring and leaving it for a week or so and we have a rather wonderful sugar pop. It is fair to say Pickle is rather excited by the result.

I think perhaps we will have another go at these another time, in a few colours. Perhaps as Christmas gifts....they are rather beautiful.

Me xx

Salty Paint

As part of our science project 2017 I decided to have a look at a series of activities that investigate what happens when you add salt to watery paint. It makes some lovely textures as the salt dissolves in the water and subsequently leaves residue behind as the water evapourates and it dries.

Image from Usbourne

Pickle and Penguin had a great time painting and sprinkling. Unfortunately I don't think I made the paint watery enough as there was little evidence of dissolving, just gaps in the paint where the salt crystals had stuck. No pretty starry patterns for us so no pictures today I am afraid.

I will definitely try this one again but I will test it first!

This week we tried making sugar crystals on a lolly stick. I am not sure if this one is going to work yet. It is pretty cold here right now and there don't seem to be any sugar crystals on the stick....I will give it a few more days. Even if it doesn't work we used a lot of great science words like 'solution'. Pickle really enjoyed mixing the 'solute' and 'solvent' together so all is not lost! I can always tip the solution into a saucer to make loose crystals if the sticks don't work. Watch this space for an update!

Water Resistance and Penguin Feet

This past week we have been playing with water resistance using our fantastic Usbourne 365 Science activities book. Pickle and Penguin have been engaged in the activities and Pickle has been asking questions too. 

The first activity we took part in was drawing with crayons and then painting over with watery paint. We used white crayon on white paper so you could really see where the paint didn't stick to the crayon marks. We had fun playing with the materials and Pickle is pretty eager to do some more things from his science book.

Today we did a second activity which was an extension of the first. The small ones did some finger painting with margarine and then painted over it with watery paint. This was far more exciting for P & P. Using familiar materials in different contexts really got them excited and the results were a lot more obvious! You could really see where they had put the margarine. We had fun and it was a nice short activity.

This past weekend we finally got around to one of our seasonal family traditions. Since becoming a family of four every season we have created a foot or hand print picture. So far we have had snowmen, butterflies, bees and leaves. This time around we made our feet into penguins. 

Looking at them in this photo they look a bit like surprised penguins but in the 'flesh' as it were they are a lot more friendly looking...

We also painted Pickle and Penguins' feet to look like penguins on their own to make our Christmas thank you cards. These ones have googly eyes on them which gives a little more character.

I hope that this is a tradition we can continue with as the small people grow, I am already scouring Pintrest for  inspiration for future print portraits....see you in a few hours....

S xx

A New Start

Hi, how are you? My name is Sam and I am a stay at home Mum of two. I have a 3 year old boy, Pickle, and a Penguin loving 1 year old girl. I love crafting, in particular crochet, and spending time with my husband, Yellow bean, and children.

In a past life I was a secondary science teacher, something I both loved and hated simultaneously. For the new year I wanted to get back to my science roots.

Between Christmas and New Year we took the sprogs to the science museum in London. They were too young. Almost everything was out of their sight line and little was interactive. It is a fantastic museum but not so good for toddlers. We all had a great time - don't get me wrong, they peered at things for a split second and ran around.

The Garden in the basement was great but a faff to find and over crowded. The staff were great and numbers were limited. We had a to wait to get in and they bought round giant slinky toys for the kids to play with. I really can't fault the staff or facilities and I am sure it is great for older kids just not toddlers, we were not their target market.

The bubble show promised to be perfect for our bubble loving two but it was a bit of a slow start and Pickle got scared right at the start and the bubbles didn't flow fast enough to distract him so we had to leave.

We had a great day but it wasn't the most appropriate trip for my kids and it wasn't the hands on introduction to 'big science' I wanted it to be.

So....I bought this book.....


Image taken from amazon.co.uk

And this year we are going to choose one topic a week and get experimenting! The book arrived today, Pickle chose his first topic - Water Resistance - so tomorrow we are going to get started! It looks pretty accessible for Penguin too - lots of crayons and paints so I think she will be able to join in.

From a first look I think it will be great. Simple, quick activities that I can pick from at the start of the week to make sure I have the right stuff around. I hope that it will spark some interest and give us some fun activities to do when Pickle is not at preschool! (He starts monday afternoon, Ahhhhh my baby, and also Yay! Penguin naps!)

Until next time... x